What is MetaScrum ?
MetaScrum is an event at program or initiative level. Here Product Owners connect regularly to have product backlog prioritized and ready for next 2 to 4 sprint for participating teams which are part of the program or initiative. This team operates at one level up from scrum teams. This team of Product Owners focuses on “WHAT” part of the program. What requirements team would be working? Hence this group meet regularly to discuss and refine features/EPICs to keep them ready to be consumed by teams.
Who all participate in SoS
Product Owners from all the teams who are part of this program or initiative. This group would have a Chief Product Owner also who will provide direction to this group, communicates vision, and help in refining features and EPICs. This event would have Scrum of Scrum Master also. SoSM would be providing inputs in terms of impediments/dependencies which participating teams are facing and how that would impact the priority and alignment of product goals.
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Outcome
This group meet regularly in this MetaScrum event to refine and prioritize product backlog i.e. features and EPICs. The outcome of this event is ready backlog for participating teams for 2 to 4 sprints. These can be tracked on Jira or any other medium which teams are comfortable using.
Prep work –
1. Give overview to Product Owners about MetaScrum
2. Setup discussion on working agreement between Product Owners
3. Have a recurring cadence defined and start meeting in MetaScrum event
Frequency –
Participating Product Owners should decide on the frequency. Factors to be considered to decide frequency
1. Number of open issues/impediments/dependencies
2. Frequency of Issues coming to SoS
3. Resolution Time longer than usual
Scaled Events –
1. Scaled Daily Scrum – All the Scrum Masters connect here regularly, bring up the issues which team could not resolve on their own
2. Scaled Retro – Discuss how the team is working? What new experiment this team did and what they can improve going forward?
Summary –
The purpose Scrum of Scrums is to help participating team to solve complex problem and work on large projects with the simplicity and power of scrum. Scaling is kept lightweight with following similar processes at all the levels; hence it is effective and easy to scale with Scrum@ Scale framework.